Semifinals: Artturi Bjork vs Will Turner

Mark Wraith

Artturi is a student at Kingston University, although he is originally from Finland. He had chance to test for Nationals over the Easter break with Tuomo Nieminen and Tommi Hovi. This gave him plenty of practice with his Wake deck standing him in good stead this weekend. It should be a fairly good matchup for him, even with the multiple Ray of Revelations that he has in his sideboard.

Game One

Will Turner started out with a second turn Aquamoeba, playing an Arrogant Wurm on his third turn. It’s Memory Lapsed, but entered play anyway on the fourth turn as all Artturi could do was cycle Renewed Faith. Bjork attempted a Wrath of God which was countered with a Circular Logic, and he had to scoop as Will Turner made another Arrogant Wurm and he had no Moment’s Peace or Wrath of God. A fairly brutal draw from the Blue-green deck.

Will Turner 1 – Artturi Bjork 0

Bjork made the sideboarding decision to take out his Cunning Wishes, Mirari’s Wakes, and Mirari’s, just to attempt the quick kill with Exalted Angel.

Game Two

Turner had to mulligan his opening hand. Bjork had a much better draw this game as well, countering Will’s Aquamoeba on turn 2 which is his only madness outlet. Turner also had only Islands as land, whereas Artturi was quite confident with his position. So much so in fact that he started whistling. Strangely he elected not to Counterspell Will’s Quiet Speculation, although this would give him multiple Deep Analyses to draw out of the color screw. Turner fetched two Deeps and a Ray of Revelation. Given that he hadn’t Countered the Speculation, it seemed very odd that he thought for much longer about Will’s flashbacked Analysis.

Artturi played a Compulsion, which Will couldn’t immediately destroy as he still hadn’t drawn a green mana source. He found one the next turn but not until Bjork had dug a couple of cards deeper into his deck. Turner’s card drawing had at least netted him an Aquamoeba and a Basking Rootwalla.

These were fogged by Moment’s Peace and then Wrath of Godded away. Will had enough lands to cast a Roar of the Wurm from his hand. Since Artturi had taken out his Cunning Wishes, he had sideboarded in Chastise, and played it on the Wurm token.

Finally Bjork found an Exalted Angel and played it face down. Unfortuantely, Will had chosen to sideboard out Wonder, so he didn’t have any way of stopping the Angel, so he had to race it. He swung in with the Wurm token dropping Bjork to 19 and attempted to flashback another one. This was Memory Lapsed. Will managed to resolve two flashbacked Roars on his next turn, however with two Moment’s Peaces sitting smugly in Artturi’s graveyard. A desperation Turbulent Dreams was Countered and the Angel finished off game two.

Will Turner 1 – Artturi Bjork 1

Game Three

Will thought about boarding the Wonders back in, but didn’t. He had to take a mulligan and made a turn 2 Aquamoeba. Artturi played Compulsion, and unfortunately Turner made a fairly large error on his third turn, playing Quiet Speculation and putting it in the graveyard before searching for any cards with flashback. “Looks like it’s lone Aquamoeba beats,” said Will. He also didn’t have any Forests so he resorted to discarding Wild Mongrels and Islands to the Aquamoeba.

Bjork had plenty of Moment’s Peaces and with a Compulsion in play was never in the slightest danger of dying to the Beast. Turner eventually found a Forest and started flashing back Roar of the Wurms. At that point Artturi cast Wrath of God to clear the board. He Memory Lapsed a second Roar and played a Morph. Will attempted to race with a Gigapede, which Artturi could easily afford to ignore.

Five turns later, Exalted Angel claimed another victim.

Will Turner 1 – Artturi Bjork 2

Game Four

Once again Will had to take a Mulligan before keeping an awfully slow hand. He had three lands and spells that cost five mana. Almost unbelievably he drew multiple Roar of the Wurms, Circular Logics, Arrogant Wurms and Gigapedes, none of which he could cast, as Artturi thinned out his deck with multiple Krosan Verges.

Turner even managed to get to eight cards in hand and then discarded Gigapede, using it as a Madness outlet in his upkeep to try an Arrogant Wurm which was killed with Wrath of God, and then another which was Memory Lapsed.

Will finally drew an Aquamoeba which Bjork probably shouldn’t have allowed to resolve as it was obvious that Turner’s hand contained multiple Roar of the Wurms. It any case it didn’t matter, as the Aquamoeba was Chastised, and Bjork made back to back Exalted Angels while countering the Roar of the Wurms to advance to the finals.